but the Competition Act gives a mandate to the Commission to term the orders of D.A. as anticompetitive because the orders of the D.A. would reduce the supply of goods in the market and could also lead to increase in the price of goods in the market. Many times, a group of producers of a commodity, in order to protect their market share, can raise the bogey of dumping before the Designated Authority, Anti Dumping Directorate and if the D.A. is satisfied it can start the investigation of antidumping of the said commodities in India. The producers can lobby before the D.A. and if the D.A. is satisfied it can pass an order declaring certain imports of the commodity from certain countries as dumping in India. Aware of this fact, the main five tyre companies moved the D.A. twice for imposing antidumping duties on tyres imported from Thailand and China. In the first instance in 2005 these five tyre companies moved a petition before the D.A. for the levy of antidumping duty on the import of lug tyres from Thailand and China. The D.A. after examining the facts of the case held that there was dumping in respect of imports of tyres from these two countries. The matter was taken in appeal before CESTAT. CESTAT confirmed the orders of the D.A. Thus, till today the imports of lug tyres from Thailand China are subject to antidumping duty. In turn, the Indian consumer is deprived of choosing a cheap tyre which used to be imported earlier. This also gave a license to the tyre companies to increase the price of their tyres to the price of the tyres which were imported into India after the levy of antidumping duty. This increased the bottomlines of the five tyre companies. In fact after the levy of the antidumping duty in 2007, the return on capital employed as on 31.03.2008 of Ceat, Apollo, J.K.Tyres and Birla Tyres increased to 20%, 24%, 14% and 32.7% from 15.1%, 17.5%, 7.5% and 29.5% as on 31.03.2007 respectively. As the accounting period of MRF closes on 30th September, its profit appear in the subsequent year. In fact in the accounting year ending on 30th September, 2008, MRF’s return on capital was 21.2% against 13.3% in the immediately preceding year. Thus the levy of antidumping duty led to price increases and lowering of choice of the consumers and higher prices.
